The short answer
We're an SEO agency working with Dandenong businesses, and the technical, content, link and local search people are all employed by us. Our only office is in Brisbane, at 1 Cheshire Street, Pallara. Projects are fixed scope and fixed price, retainers run month to month, and out of scope work gets quoted before anyone starts it.
Here the person signing the contract has their name on the building
Dandenong is Melbourne's manufacturing centre, and the Dandenong South estate is where most of it happens. Engineering shops, food processing, plastics, sheet metal, packaging, transport yards, and wholesalers supplying retailers through Noble Park, Springvale and Keysborough. Greater Dandenong is also one of the most culturally diverse municipalities in the country, and plenty of these firms were started by someone who arrived, worked for another shop a decade, then opened their own. Doveton and the older residential streets feed the workforce.
That shapes the agency relationship in ways suppliers used to marketing departments get wrong. There is no marketing manager. You're pitching the owner, often the founder, and they can tell inside one meeting whether the person opposite will still be answering the phone in eight months.
The commercial problem underneath is different again. These firms sell to trade buyers, not shoppers. A purchasing officer sourcing a component searches nothing like a consumer picking a takeaway on Lonsdale Street: different words, longer decisions, and almost no map pack in sight. An agency whose portfolio is cafes and plumbers has not done this work, and it's fair to ask them to prove otherwise.
Ask who does the work, and get names
Every agency says the team is in house. It costs them nothing to say. Three questions that make the answer checkable.
Who is on my account, by name and role, and which of them will be on the next call? A proper answer is four or five names with jobs attached.
Which of them are employed and which are contracted, and where do they sit? A mix is normal. Refusing to break it down is not.
If my account manager leaves, who picks it up and how does the context move? If the answer depends on one person's memory, you'll be re explaining your business inside a year.
Ask how a scope change gets priced, before you need one
Almost every agency argument is about work nobody scoped. A new product line. A second site for the wholesale arm. An update that breaks half the templates. Sort it out while they still want your business.
Get the inclusions as a list, not a paragraph. Ongoing optimisation covers everything and commits to nothing.
Ask what triggers a variation, and get the hourly rate for out of scope work in writing before you sign. The rate quoted afterwards is always higher.
Ask who approves a variation, and whether work ever starts before you've approved it. The only acceptable answer is that it doesn't.
Ask what happens when scope shrinks, the question nobody asks. Drop two of five services in month seven and does the retainer come down, or does the number just sit there?
The same two lists, about us
You get names before you sign, and the people on the kick off call are the people on the account. All 32 staff are employed by us and no writing goes to an offshore queue.
Projects are fixed scope and fixed price with the deliverables listed, retainers a fixed monthly figure with the inclusions listed the same way. Anything outside gets quoted before work starts, and nothing begins without your approval. Cut services and the retainer is rewritten, because month to month has to mean something to be worth advertising.
Where our people sit, and what that costs you in Dandenong South
There is no Melbourne office. Everything runs from Brisbane, and we'd rather write it here than have it surface on the third call.
For a factory the honest cost is specific. Nobody from our team walks your floor, and for this kind of business the floor is where the good material is. Photographs of the machines, a video of a part being made, an operator explaining a tolerance in his own words.
So we do it the practical way. You hire a photographer in Melbourne, we write the shot list and manage them, and we can carry the cost through the project. The person on your floor should be local. The person building the technical and content programme doesn't need to be, because Search Console, your CMS and your product data behave the same from any postcode.
Where else this team runs accounts
SEO agency work in Cranbourne, Clyde North, Box Hill and Pakenham, plus businesses through Dandenong South, Noble Park, Springvale, Keysborough and Doveton. The full list is on service areas, and there's sector work for trade and construction.
Already settled on a supplier and want to know what the work involves? SEO services in Dandenong covers the programme itself.
How an account starts
A written audit before any money changes hands
The site, the capability and product pages, and what the suppliers above you do that you don't.
Names and a number
Who's on the account, what the monthly figure includes, and what sits outside it.
The first quarter, agreed in advance
Technical faults, then the pages trade buyers search for, then the catalogue side if you sell online.
Monthly reporting and a call with a person
Enquiries and quote requests first, work listed as URLs.
Reasons accounts here stay past year one
The people at the kick off are the people on the account.
No handover to a delivery team you've never met, and no salesperson who evaporates once the first invoice clears.
Most of our growth is repeat work.
Clients coming back or sending someone else. It's the number worth asking any agency for, because it's the one they can't dress up.
Nothing that holds you in.
Month to month, and trading under the same name since 2015 with 96 reviews at 4.9.
"Three agencies in, and none of them understood what we make."
Usually the supplier wrote the site from a template and never asked what a purchase order looks like. Our first session is about your buyers and your products, and if we can't follow the technical side we'll say so rather than write around it.